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Vintage Matchup: MUD vs. U/W Landstill

Welcome back! It's been a while since I've written about Vintage so I'm pretty excited to be back and battling some really powerful decks against one another. In this week's article I'm going to detail a match featuring Forgemaster MUD against the new U/W Landstill control deck. Both decks are formidable in different ways and are likely to be popular choices for upcoming Vintage events. Thus testing out the matchup seems to have a lot of practical implications.

Sideboard

I've had quite a few requests to play from the Mishra's Workshop side of things so this time I will be piloting the MUD deck while my opponent plays U/W Landstill.

Without any further delay let's get to the games!

Game 1

I win the die roll with MUD and elect to go first. Obviously being on the play is a huge advantage with a Workshop deck but if any deck has the tools to battle back I believe that the Landstill deck might be able to make a match of it!

Turn 1

My turn 1 play here should be pretty clear: lead with the Ancient Tomb and cast Sphere of Resistance. I make precisely this play and pass the turn taking two damage in the process. We don't want to lead out on a Mishra's Workshop here because there's a good chance that he'll Wasteland us if we do. Although it saves us two life ultimately hit points aren't the most important thing at stake at this juncture of the game. It's important that I get one big boost out of the three mana.

After drawing a card for his turn my opponent plays out a Flooded Strand and passes the turn.

Turn 2

For our turn we draw Mana Crypt which is interesting because it gives us the option to play our Kuldotha Forgemaster if we want. However the Lodestone is actually just better here as it continues to disrupt my opponent's mana and provides me with a clock.

I play the Workshop and use it to cast Mana Crypt and then the Lodestone Golem (taking two from Ancient Tomb in the process). While I like to be savvy about saving Mana Crypt sometimes in order to not take damage it's important to play it here because there's the possibility that he has a Force of Will and could turn around and Wasteland our Workshop. Even if he makes this play (which is quite good) we can still play our Forgemaster during our next turn to try to keep the pressure up.

After drawing a card for the turn my opponent plays a Mishra's Factory and passes the turn. Presumably he's hoping to be able to trade his Factory next turn with the Lodestone or possibly just hold it off while he tries to get lands into play to cast spells.

Turn 3

On my upkeep I take three from the Mana Crypt dropping me to thirteen life and draw an Ancient Tomb which doesn't do anything for me just yet.

I give my opponent the brief glimmer of hope that I'm not going to Strip Mine him right away before actually activating Strip Mine to kill his Mishra's Workshop. "Oh you saw the play. I guess I don't get to cast any spells this game€"

It's pretty obvious that the play is to Strip Mine him now before he gets to play a third land (which could potentially cast Swords to Plowshares during his main phase).

On my opponent's turn he draws and plays another Mishra's Factory and passes the turn.

Turn 4

On my upkeep my Mana Crypt deals three damage to me dropping me down to eight life which is irrelevant because I have the Forgemaster to get rid of the card if I need to. I draw another Lodestone Golem for the turn.

I play my second Ancient Tomb and tap all three of my lands and Mana Crypt to add nine colorless mana to my mana pool (taking four more damage in the process which drops me down to four life) in order to cast Lodestone Golem and Tangle Wire.

I attack with the Lodestone Golem which drops my opponent to ten life and pass the turn.

Turn 4

On my turn I draw another Mishra's Workshop which is a little bit awkward since we just went to such great lengths to protect the one we had. Fortunately the card is insane and is going to let us play a bunch of stuff this turn!

Since my opponent is pretty badly locked under the Wire I have to decide between two plays: cast the Forgemaster or the Chalice of the Void for two. I decide that the play is to make Chalice of the Void first since it will protect the Forgemaster later from a potential Disenchant. And besides the one thing I want to make sure I play this game is a Chalice of the Void for two as it protects me from Kataki and Serenity.

The Chalice resolves and I send in my Revoker for two damage. Lastly I use my Wasteland to destroy his Mishra's Factory so that he'll have to tap all of his permanents to the Tangle Wire during his upkeep.

Turn 6

My opponent once again is forced to tap all of his permanents to the Tangle Wire and once again he makes no more plays and passes the turn.

Turn 9

I draw another Mishra's Factory and play it. Then I activate my other Factory and attack with my guys. The newly played Factory pumps the attacker and my opponent takes five damage dropping him down to seven life.

Thoughts on the Matchup

MUD had a pretty overall good matchup against Landstill. The game where I was on the play with a good hand I absolutely crushed him. The MUD nut draw is unbeatable for blue decks that don't have Force of Will on the draw.

The game where I was on the draw with a pretty slow hand I was able to grind out a very good U/W starting hand and lock him down with Tangle Wire and Chalice of the Void for two.

We played a few more games and it appeared to me that the U/W Landstill deck really only won when certain conditions were met. Firstly it needed to not get locked out right away (which is pretty obvious). In about 35% of the total games we played (many of the games where MUD was on the play) U/W never got to play a spell and died. Of the remaining 65% of our games they were grinding battles where U/W won about two-thirds of them mostly on the back of Kataki and Serenity.

In game 1 before sideboarding if MUD was on the play it was almost impossible to lose. If U/W was on the play it seemed that MUD was still pretty significantly advantaged.

After sideboarding being on the play still put MUD way ahead while U/W was a little bit advantaged on the play.

Overall this matchup tends to favor MUD by a quite a bit.

I don't usually play Mishra's Workshop decks and normally when I playtest I like to be the blue deck rather than the brown deck. However actually getting to play from the side of the Mishra's Workshop deck I was surprised at how much play I actually had and how much my choices impacted the game. I think that game 2 is a really good example of how making good decisions can really break the back of the blue deck over the course of a long game.

Also I was kind of taken by how powerful the MUD deck was. Every fourth or fifth game we played my opponent didn't get to cast a single spell.

The card that really impressed me as I played more and more games with MUD was Mishra's Factory. It really gave the deck a lot of closing power and was fantastic against Jace the Mind Sculptor. There was one game where I beat a Serenity by pounding face with three Factory. Most lists have four Factory but after playing a bunch with the card I wouldn't even consider playing less than the max.

"These Assembly Workers do a lot of work in the MUD deck!"

It occurs to me that perhaps the reason that MUD has been putting up such solid results is that it's simply really really powerful and super consistent. It'll be interesting to see if Burning Wish / Oath of Druids is able to take MUD off the pedestal as the best performing deck in Vintage.

Perhaps if Burning Wish starts putting up some results I'll have reason to battle that deck against MUD in the future.